"A caste is a group of Amentans who all do similar jobs. Usually people have families within their caste, so over time we can become better and better at our specialties."

"Oh, I see. We might have a similar system – parents usually teach their children how to run their business and allot them drones which are already trained in it, but it's not...as formal as your system, I think. Purple and blue are two castes – what other castes are there?"

"We also have yellows, greens, oranges, and greys."

"Should we treat people of different castes differently? In the sense of...social norms. What work does each caste do?"

"Blues own land and direct the government and judiciary. There are very few of us. Greens do research and professional art. Yellows do clerical work of various kinds. Oranges do medical and caretaking work. Greys are our soldiers and police. And purples do things like construction, agriculture, shipping, and manufacture. About half of Amentans are purple. We talk to each other a little differently, but it is not important enough to worry about so early in learning about each other!"

"I see. If I was to map myself onto your castes, I would be a blue, though I used to be grey, or, hm, I'm not sure. I was an explorer, surveyor, and sailor. Is that a grey job? Prediction: castes are inherited and people do not change castes."

One of the others will say that it will take a few hours for the wood to arrive, and longer – probably a few days – for the sewage and electric connections to be set up. If they have other requests they can accommodate in the interim they can handle those.

"Your prediction is right! And those would be grey jobs, yes."

For the interim the ship is totally sufficient for their needs.

"In the meantime, we would like to know more about your desires with regards to interaction between our civilizations, as well as products or information you want for us to trade. And also, the manner by which you wish to conduct this trade, and what measures of value or currency you use. We would like there to be openness between our civilizations – connection is only possible through openness; friendship is only possible through vulnerability. Likewise we will be open about our answers to these same questions to you, if you are."

"That makes sense! We have more technology than you do, so except for things we are working on here where transporting it is a cost, probably most of what you make will not be in much demand for us. But we would love to settle some people here, purchasing land for those people to live on while they teach you more about what we know and learn about your world and people."

He feels mildly abashed about how bluntly they said that but being blunt makes sense what with the language barrier. Fortunately, he has impassivity training even though he's not a drone – it's very useful if you work in government – so it won't show on his face.

"Most land is owned by the Imperial or regional governments, and can be purchased according to their appraisal of the land's value – this appraisal is done once every dozen years in the Imperial census. However, most of that land is either remote, barren, prone to natural disasters, or otherwise undesirable in some way, since all of the desirable land has already been purchased by people. You will need to negotiate with those people privately if you wish to buy it.

The income source for the Imperial and regional governments is land value tax, which involves paying a portion of the land's appraised value as tax. The corollary is that the governments are obliged to purchase the land from the owner at any time at the appraised price, since that is what the government has claimed the land's true price to be. In this way, the state has an incentive to appraise the value of land correctly. People who work in governance such as myself receive a very, very small portion of the total revenue of the state as a salary.

The land outside the Imperium's borders is outside our jurisdiction, and you can do with it as you wish – although there are already people there, we have no obligation to them – they are not Imperial citizens. Likewise, you are all not Imperial citizens and so would not be able to buy land here, but we can work out an immigration scheme, such as permitting residency for Amentans such that they cannot enlist in the military, run for office, or vote, but can own land."

"We might be able to use land that is undesirable to you! However, it is important to us that land have seasons. Your year is shorter than ours and we are not sure if it is long enough to work with our seasonal biology, but we think it is worth trying; however, polar and equatorial locations will not work. Are the people outside the Imperium organized in states or are they generally stateless?"

"Yes, you have much better technology, and I would be happy to see unproductive land being put to good use. It is efficient and not wasteful – this is one of our values. The majority of people live in the subtropics: there are fewer people living in temperate areas. The two regions both have distinct hot and cold seasons, but in the subtropics, the temperatures do not drop below freezing. Unless, of course, there's a cold snap.

I'm not sure. We don't really pay attention to people who live outside the Imperium. From what I know, they have small regional governments, but many are stateless."

"We love temperate areas. And we can separately talk to people from outside the Imperium to find out their situation. Do you have information on their languages?"

"Yes, but it's not the best. We abolished the death penalty after the early days of the Imperium, and now we only practice exile. The people you meet probably will not be friendly. We cannot assure your safety there – though I presume that you have your own protective measures. 

For this reason, many people outside will still speak Standard Imperial, or an older version thereof, but there are other languages from before the Imperium's founding which are still in use. We can give you language primers and corpora for them."

Both standard books and microfilm will be provided to the Amentans.

"Thank you very much, our linguists will get to work on these! Can we see a map of where the Imperium covers?"

They will produce a map!

The world is divided into roughly two landmasses or continents, separated by a circular-ish or ellipsoid central sea. The part on the bottom right is labeled "Old World" and the one on the top left is the "New World". There are ice caps and minor landmasses at the poles, but not big enough to be called continents proper. Both main continents are longer than they are wide, with large seasonal variation.

The Imperium's borders are marked with a red and yellow line: it seems that it occupies roughly three quarters of the Old World, and seven eighths of the New World. The majority of the land in the Imperium's borders is subtropical – it seems that they prefer that? The leftover land is mostly temperate forest, tundra, tropical forest, desert, and mountains.

The parts which are inside the Imperium's borders are marked with the locations of major cities. The parts outside have fewer labels, although they do mark the locations of the main non-Imperium cities.

"Thank you, that is very helpful! Would you like to see a map of Amenta?"

"Yes, please." What does Amenta look like? Do they have a dominant polity, or is there a balance of powers? What's their geography like? Restem would assume that it would be at least somewhat similar to Zmavliterdi's given that they want to live here.

Amenta looks like so. Tapa is this area here; it's got a desert and a lot of coastline. Most of the land is in the northern hemisphere. There are dozens of countries, though Tapa is one of the biggest, along with Voa, which it has a border with. There are deserts and mountains and seas and islands.

"Does Tapa have connections with the other Amentan countries, like a federation or a union? Will we have to negotiate separately with the other Amentan countries – are they also interested in coming?"

"We have treaties with the other countries. They are not supposed to come to planets we find without our invitation, so you don't have to negotiate with them unless you would like to."

"What are your expectations regarding how diplomacy should be conducted? How do Amentan countries negotiate with each other? What sort of things get put in treaties? We would like to know this so that we can avoid or forestall miscommunications.

We are most interested in how you handle extradition and immigration, since those are two things which we ourselves will have to talk about soon – I understand that we have only recently met and will not take anything you say as being binding: we can formally draft and ratify treaties later."

"This meeting we are having now is not unlike Amentan diplomacy, though normally there would be a permanent ambassador. Treaties cover topics like acceptable tactics in times of war, immigration and extradition, the use of global resources including the cleanliness of the air and water and the supply of fish in the sea and the carrying capacity of the planet and the other celestial bodies in our home system, trade and international travel policy, cooperation with one another's control of sensitive information, and, yes, extradition and immigration. In general Amentan countries do not want immigration except of particularly valuable citizens with rare skills or other standout qualities, but it's in everyone's interest to allow some migration; most pairs of countries have agreements that their citizens can change places across international borders in commensurate number and caste. Extradition varies a lot more, since not all Amentans equally value their traveling citizens being interviewed for their charges at home."

"Why do Amentan countries not want immigration? Wouldn't those new citizens pay tax? In that sense, it is in the government's interest to want to attract as many citizens as possible.

With regard to the Imperium, we care deeply about freedom of movement, so people from different provinces can freely move between each one – the Imperium's governance is divided into the main Imperial government, of which I am a representative, and the provincial governments. The Imperial government manages the military and all foreign affairs.

Likewise, although we patrol our borders, we don't police them – people are free to enter and leave as they wish. The only issue is that those who are not citizens, residents, or visa-holders will not be subject to, and by extension be protected by, our law, and so anyone who commits criminal acts against them cannot be prosecuted by us.

Citizens can own land, enlist in the military, run for public office, and vote. Residents can only own land but not the last three. Visa-holders are like residents, but also cannot own land."

"Most Amentan countries, including Tapa, don't actually have taxes, except for Pigouvian taxes and other such things intended to discourage certain kinds of consumption or produce a tightly coupled budget for a specific program. Even countries that do have taxation are typically democracies, and Amentan populations generally prefer less immigration to lower per-capita taxes. While support positions in our military are available to the appropriate castes, combat positions specifically are by international law limited to greys, and public office is blue-specific; anyone can own land but collecting rent on it is classified as blue income."